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Background Craving is a central component to alcohol use disorders, although there are contradictory findings in the literature regarding the importance of craving in alcohol use. The study goal was to examine the bidirectional relationship between craving and alcohol consumption in heavy drinkers. Methods Participants received brief alcohol interventions from their primary care physicians and then were asked to make daily reports of craving and alcohol consumption to an interactive voice response ( IVR) telephone system for 180 days. The study sample included 246 participants (166 men) with mean age of 46. Ninety-seven percent were Caucasian and 66% met criteria for alcohol dependence. Analysis used generalized estimating equations ( GEE) to evaluate whether craving intensity predicted next day alcohol consumption and whether alcohol consumption predicted next day craving intensity. Significant interactions with gender led to stratified analyses. Results GEE analyses revealed a significant bidirectional relationship between craving and drinking, where craving intensity predicted next day total drinks consumed ( p = 0.001), and total drinks predicted next day craving intensity ( p = 0.02). Exploratory analysis found that gender significantly moderated the craving-drinking relationship ( p = 0.002) with men increasing next day alcohol use more ( b = 0.19) than women ( b = 0.08). Conclusions Findings suggest a bidirectional relationship between craving and drinking may contribute to the development or maintenance of heavy drinking, particularly for men. Based on our findings, we recommend that during brief interventions, physicians address both drinking and craving and provide advice for coping with craving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: We present methodology to identify statistically distinct patterns of daily alcohol use and classify them into categories that could be further used in monitoring of transitions between patterns such as transitions from regular to problem use., Data: The study analyzed individual patterns of adult alcohol consumption from two datasets containing short (<6 month) and long (up to 2years) daily records of drinking. These data were collected over the period between 1999 and 2003., Results: By using a non-parametric (Kolmogorov-Smirnov) test we have identified distinct drinking patterns and classified them into 8 types according to their means, percentages of non-drinking days and variances of consumed amount during drinking days. For each studied individual we calculated a transition chart that characterizes transitions between the types., Conclusions: Individual daily consumption patterns can be identified, and classified into distinct patterns. Changes between the patterns could be related to life events or environmental trends, and thus provide insights into pathways towards either heavier use or recovery., (Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To compare near-concurrent and retrospective reports of alcohol consumption and to determine whether a simple adjustment function could be applied to the retrospective reports to correct any distortions in reporting., Method: Reports of daily alcohol consumption collected via an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system were aggregated over 30, 90 and 366 days and compared with the corresponding retrospective reports gathered with the Timeline Follow Back (TLFB). Comparisons of the IVR and TLFB reports for five consumption variables were made for each time period for 33 men., Results: Significant differences between reporting methods were found for four of the five variables tested. On average, the TLFB yielded an underestimate of alcohol consumption compared to the IVR. This underestimate associated with TLFB reports was not dependent on the length of the recall period. Regression analyses indicated that the relationship between the two modalities of reporting was dependent on the quantity of drinks reported, thus precluding the application of a simple, linear metric to the TLFB data to model near real-time daily data obtained through the IVR more accurately., Conclusions: The retrospective TLFB consistently and significantly underestimated alcohol consumption compared to the aggregated daily reports. This underestimate, however, was stable across the three reporting periods. With one exception, no simple linear function could be applied to the retrospective TLFB consumption reports to more accurately reflect the IVR data gathered daily. Evidence presented here also suggests that underreporting on the TLFB is not simply a matter of consciously attempting to conceal consumption.